This is not one of my normal posts, but I’m angry. And, I am tired of the placid hand-wringing that infects social media when something bad happens again, such as the recent terror attacks. It feels so pointless to wail “When will this end?”. So shallow. Self-indulgent. So.. immature.
Slowly, surely, inexorably, the reality of what we face after yet another attack is sinking in. All the “vigilance” and “toughness” in the world won’t stop this stuff completely. A guy in a truck can’t get bombs, so he grabs a truck and drives through a crowd. One guy with a grievance and an ideology that made him feel important for the first time in his miserable life. There’s no defense that will work against that all the time.
We Americans are soft and flabby, distracted by shiny things, grown lazy and stupid and corrupt. But as we see more of the terror attacks (and there will be more), we will start to remember we’re not descended from timid people.
I don’t want to have to think like this, but I don’t have the luxury any more. Living in a fuzzy bubble of fake-feel-good cat videos isn’t going to help. They were not perfect, our ancestors, God knows. But they were capable of a cold, resolute and implacable wrath when their backs were to the wall. It has happened before. After attacking Pearl Harbor and launching WWII in the Pacific, the Japanese admiral in charge said prophetically:
“I fear all we have done is to awaken a sleeping giant and fill him with a terrible resolve.” –Isoroku Yamamoto
HemmingPlay 
They have always been here. But what have we become?
I don’t know if humanity still has a chance of surviving. We don’t need them to see the end of us. They are just a small piece of the puzzle. We, the people, have already put most of it together.
You never when has the time come until it’s too late. Until it’s already here. But I still believe in us. I believe that we, the people, have the power to do what is, at last, right.
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Oh, I’m optimistic in the long term– by a small margin. Overpopulation. Climate change. Globalism and growing inequity. Massive migration caused by the above, and the inevitable conflicts. I joke with a cousin who lives in Florida to watch himself when he and the other flooding refugees leave south Florida and run into the good ol’ boys with guns in Alabama and Georgia. But it’s not really funny. Just gallows humor. The threats posed by the Salafist/Wahabi/Arab fundamentalists can’t really reach their goals. It’s laughable, really, this whole ‘clash of civilizations’ fantasy. East and West have always had differences, but maybe it’ll sink in that we need to hang together or we will most certainly hang separately.
The only thing they’ll do is consolidate a resolve and resistance to them. They have no real answers, only nihilism and hopelessness. But the world can’t figure out how to handle all of the threats, beyond this one, which is not really the most important one, IMHO.
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This one is, because of all that has happened in the 21st century, quite common. But this planet can no longer tolerate our stupid behaviors and one day, Mother Nature will do what she has to and apply the rules of the jungle to save herself.
Hey, for what it’s worth, if the time comes, or ‘when’ the time comes, you will look back at this short but rather eventful history of humanity and say:
((We brought ourselves technology, transportation, health care, Mozart, Hemingway, a GT350 Shelby Mustang, and our end. We made it all, and destroyed it all. We are the reason behind everything that happened to us.))
That’ll be a nice last seen for a Tarantino ending…
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It would, but then there wouldn’t be anybody left to watch the movie. 🙂
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That’s the hope! 😉
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It fills you up, the anger. It will grow and grow and grow, but you try to hide it. Then, one day, some insensible prick comes along and you believe running people over is going to do you good. You think you’re the hero. People are just toys. Filled up with reality show and fast food, or some fucked up belief that’s going to make a couple of headlines. Times aren’t changing, but people have.
Hope you find some sort of peace. You’re going to need it.
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In the grand scheme of things, events like this are only pinpricks. And this latest didn’t happen here, although culturally and philosophically, we feel the malevolence and know it’s aimed at us, too. These apocalyptic death cults want to bring about the end of the world. They might, but it won’t be what they imagine.
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Enough said my friend. When we just become empty cymbals that only like to hear how we sound, we have lost half of humanity.
~ Dajena 🙂
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So true.
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